


move on the path, but keep the flame

by independentalto



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, a 7x11 rewrite in a way, spoilers for 7x11
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 10:48:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25848343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/independentalto/pseuds/independentalto
Summary: Mack sighed. It was the sigh of a man who’d long-suffered the confusion of single men. “She’s into you,” he told Sousa, and Daisy let the sentence sit, let it float in the air above her as if it were tangible. It felt odd to discuss her love life so casually – even if it wasn’t her doing the discussing – and to think that she was something so simple asinto Sousawas almost unthinkable.or, a rewrite of the space scene in 7x11 feat. some 7x09 dialogue.
Relationships: Skye | Daisy Johnson/Daniel Sousa
Comments: 20
Kudos: 122





	move on the path, but keep the flame

**Author's Note:**

> based off of the prompt "you shouldn't be up here alone" and "i like you, a lot" from @justaleapoffaith on tumblr -- thanks for the prompt!

It’s funny, how one can spend so much time in an aircraft and still not get used to the taste of stale air. 

Daisy laid prone on the floor of the Quinjet, halfway to considering counting the squares on the ceiling when she hears the voices of Sousa and Mack spring to life from the cockpit. They’re muted, most likely out of assumption that she’s taking a nap (how could she, when she’s the one practically responsible for two other lives on this plane; it was partly why she hadn’t chosen to tell anyone where she was going), and if she squints just right, adjusts the particles and vibrations coming from their mouths, she can hear what they’re saying. 

_ “What are your intentions?”  _

_ “Sir?” _

_ “With Daisy.”  _ The thought almost made her crack up – it’s almost the end of the world as they all know it, and still Mack’s finding the time to give shovel talks. It’s nice, though, to know someone’s on her side. Maybe someone that’ll go beyond dropping cordial lines in a group chat every now and again. Still doesn’t make it any less embarrassing on her end, though. 

_ “I don’t have any intentions.”  _ Oh, Sousa. She’d truly never met a more straight-edged man. Daisy from seven years ago would have cackled in her face. Or, rather,  _ Skye  _ from seven years ago would have cackled in her face. Hell, her self from seven years ago wouldn’t have believed she would move out of her van, let alone get taken in by a covert intelligence agency, have said agency fall apart, discover her alien heritage, be betrayed by people several times over, time travel and experience space. And that was just being general about it. 

_ “Well, then, you better get some. And quick. ‘Cause this thing is coming for you.”  _ Daisy frowned. She wasn’t a  _ thing _ . Although she supposed he wasn’t wrong about  _ her  _ intentions – once, you know, the world stopped needing consistent saving. She’d get around to telling him about the kiss in the time loops. She would. 

_ “This...thing?”  _ Good. At least Sousa was confused along with her. 

Mack sighed. It was the sigh of a man who’d long-suffered the confusion of single men.  _ “She’s into you,”  _ he told Sousa, and Daisy let the sentence sit, let it float in the air above her as if it were tangible. It felt  _ odd _ to discuss her love life so casually – even if it wasn’t her doing the discussing – and to think that she was something so simple as  _ into  _ Sousa was almost unthinkable. Their kiss in the time loops had been simple, a moment of quiet contentment where all of the voices in her head silenced themselves for one second in favor of focusing on the feel of Daniel Sousa’s lips on hers. 

She hadn’t had the voices go so quiet since Lincoln. 

And that was part of the thing, wasn’t it? Daisy could take all the interest she wanted in Sousa, kiss him like the world was ending and be, as Mack said,  _ into him  _ – but there would always be the matter of the Inhuman doctor who’d left her behind the last time a Quinjet had gone on a one-way trip to space. There would always be the corner of her mind dedicated to his presence, a screen in her movie theater of memories dedicated to watching the little blip in space burst into flames while she probed it for ways that she could have changed its outcome. She could never give herself over fully to a man that had given so much to her already.

Maybe she shouldn’t have kissed him in the time loop. God knows she had enough mistakes in her book to fill a whole shelf already. 

_ “And I’m not even sure she knows it yet, but pretty soon, she’ll figure it out.”  _ Daisy had it figured out, all right – it was just a question of whether she deserved to. Whether  _ he  _ deserved to.  _ “And when she does...watch out. ‘Cause when she gets something into her head…”  _

_ “She won’t stop.”  _ Sousa chuckled under his breath.  _ “Yeah, I noticed.”  _

Mack sighed again, and there was some squeaking as he adjusted his position.  _ “But listen,”  _ he began, and the air in the Quinjet grew tighter, if that was even possible.  _ “Daisy’s been hurt. Bad. So I’m happy she’s ready to dive back in, and I’m happy it’s you. I like you. You seem like a good man.”  _

_ “Thanks, I…”  _

But Mack wasn’t finished, apparently.  _ “Even if you’re a little, you know, straight ahead…”  _ Daisy snorted, then started, hoping it hadn’t been caught by the men. She and Mack thought alike, apparently.  _ “But I’m not about to let her get hurt again. You hear what I’m saying?” _

_ “I...I think so. I think you’re...threatening me. Sir.”  _ Maybe this would cause him to run, she mused. Maybe she wouldn’t have to go through the gauntlet of having to explain her current state of mind and Sousa would be scared off by the mere verbal threat that was Mack. But even as the thought crossed her mind, it was being waved off; the man hadn’t been phased by space, homicidal robots or time travel, a shovel talk was child’s play.

_ “No,”  _ Mack answered, and Daisy could  _ hear  _ how he’d purposely attempted to deepen his voice.  _ “Not just me. Every member of this team. And we have technology at SHIELD that you’ve never seen…”  _

If Daisy had thought Coulson – well, living Coulson, anyways, not the current version of him – would be the one most capable of giving an embarrassingly fatherly shovel talk, she would have been so, so wrong. She’d have to thank Mack later. If there was a later. 

_ “I hear you. Loud and clear.”  _ A pause.  _ “I would never hurt her.”  _ It was a sweet, solid sentiment, a textbook Daniel Sousa answer that she hoped like nothing else would be true. Wasn’t that what she deserved? A period in her life where dramatics were consistently nonexistent?

Mack seemed to sit with the answer for a while, and so did Daisy.  _ “Hmm,”  _ he said finally, and she had to agree.  _ “The man out of time and Quake. Just like a damn comic book.”  _

Never mind. Scratch all of what she’d just thought, she was going to  _ kill  _ Mack if this goddamned final mission didn’t do it. She could hear the two of them snickering in the pilots’ seats, the bastards. Groaning, Daisy got to her feet, making sure the sounds of her getting up could be heard. “Talking about me, gentlemen?” she asked, and she almost wished she had a camera if not to catch the half-terrified looks on Mack and Sousa’s faces. 

“No,” Mack said, swallowing the bold-faced lie while doing his best to keep his features neutral. “We, uh, we were…” Daisy watched him struggle for a bit more, her smile growing wider as a few beads of sweat appeared on his forehead. Finally, she just patted him on the shoulder. “Think it’s my cue to go take a nap,” he finally groaned, leaving her to slip into the chair beside Sousa. 

Mack’s attempts to settle on the seats of the Quinjet occupied the cabin for quite some time, but when he finally went silent, the two of them sat in the lack of sound, staring out at the wide expanse of space. In the back of her mind, Daisy knew she should probably talk about what’d happened in the time loops – after all, where better than to talk about time than in space – but a), she’d seen enough movies to know that a heavy conversation like that would only lead to sacrifice plays down the road, and b) her track record with big speeches and fights wasn’t going too well at the moment. 

She settled for a casual quip instead: “Didn’t think I’d get company on this trip.” She hadn’t  _ intended  _ to possibly live out her last hours the way Lincoln had, adrift and (for all purposes) alone with nothing but the stars, but there was something fitting about it. Maybe their universes had always been meant to be parallel to each other, since they clearly hadn’t meant to be permanently intertwined. 

“Yeah, well,” Sousa shifted, and she could feel his stare boring into the side of her cheek. It wasn’t an intrusive stare, simply one that reminded her of his presence. ( _ Present.  _ For all of the things that Daniel Sousa could be described as, the one word that did the best was the exact opposite of his makeup; despite being from the past, Sousa had always made sure to simply be present.) “You shouldn’t be up here alone.” 

“Hell of a way to die, though.” She wondered if some small part of him would’ve preferred to have died the hero’s death in 1955, rather than a nameless corpse in the cold vacuum of space.  _ Actually  _ died, rather than Coulson having stood in his place. Better to have died a legend than have died alone, right? “You ever think you’d end up going this way?” 

“Did you?”

_ Maybe,  _ she mused, twisting so that her right knee was tucked under her chin. Then again, Daisy could count on just under both hands the number of instances she’d thought she was slated for death, only to be given some twisted, renewed chance at life. She’d certainly thought she would die in space when she was made to be Kree entertainment, for one. “Honestly, there’s a lot of ways I thought I would die,” she answered, turning so she could face him. “So yeah, this was one of them.” She shrugged. “Perks of being part of SHIELD and all that.” 

Sousa hummed. “Join SHIELD, they said,” he joked, and she had to stifle a laugh. “Travel the world, meet new people, they said. Figure out how you’re going to die...now that wasn’t in the handbook.” 

“Probably not in the 1955 handbook,” Daisy replied, “but I’m sure Mack or Coulson’s made some amendments somewhere.” 

“Still, never would’ve figured out I would’ve gone this way.” He gestured to the window, where the sky hadn’t changed a bit since they’d lost fuel some thirty minutes ago. “Hell, man hadn’t even been to space. Technically, I think this makes the first man to break the final frontier.” 

“Is that why you came?” she joked, leaning back in the seat. “To cement a place in history only you’ll be able to talk about?” 

“Among other things.” 

Daisy sighed. She knew what was coming, but she wanted – no, needed – to hear the words from Sousa’s mouth. Even though she’d been the one to drag him out, she still needed to hear why he’d come. “Why did you come, then?” 

Silence. “I like you,” Sousa said simply, as if the admittance hadn’t cost him a thing. She wondered how he did that; simply let his confessions float away like balloons without considering the consequences of them popping. “I like you, a lot. Probably more than I should.”

“Yeah?” she asked, forcing her heart to stop pounding out a bass beat in her chest. “What do you like about me?” 

“You’re focused on the greater good, even at your own expense. Someone who wants people to think you _ like _ being alone, even though you always end up back with friends. You hate losing.” 

She chuckled, because  _ fuck,  _ of course he wouldn’t remember that he’d uttered the exact same words to her not 24 hours ago. Which made the fact that she was about to bring said loops up all the more ironic, quite honestly. If she thought hard enough, she could recall the conversation as it was, word for word. “Everyone hates losing.”

“Yeah, but you’ll keep running at the problem full-tilt until you either solve it or slam headlong into a brick wall. And some of those walls are literal.” Her (likely concussed) head knew that  _ very  _ well, thank you very much. Some of it probably explained why she kept running into the walls. “And when people like you run into those walls, you should have someone there to pick you back up.”

“And you...you like to be that someone?” Despite the fact that she knew the next line, it still never failed to astonish her that out of everyone, he’d chosen her. The last woman involved in his life had been  _ Peggy Carter,  _ for heaven’s sake. And while she got that there weren’t necessarily choices at the Lighthouse, he could’ve gotten off at any point during their travels; yet he’d stayed. 

“Not for everyone.” His cheeks were pink, and Daisy tucked back the hint of a smile. “It helps if they’re fun to be around. And if they say what they mean. And, uh, if they have that superpower where they can rock things around, which is very impressive.” 

“Comes with a lot of baggage, though,” she answered, more of a warning than anything.  _ Daisy’s been hurt. Bad.  _ Mack hadn’t said it just to say it – he’d seen her in the depths of her grief after Lincoln’s death, barely hanging on by a thread when she’d left SHIELD to masquerade as the hero Quake. He knew more than most that her legacy was more than just Inhuman powers and a hard-headed willingness to do good in the world. 

It was bitterness and survivor’s guilt, a reckless need to right the wrong that had been Lincoln stealing Elena’s cross from her jacket and changing the prophecy she’d been so set on fulfilling. It was having to share space with the ghost of a man who was no longer there, understanding when the memories threatened to swallow her up on her worst days. 

It was needing to understand that while he would never have a distant second place in her life, there were simply some walls he wouldn’t be able to pick her back up from once she was done running into them. She wondered if he could do that; if he could find success in the failures. 

Speaking of failures… “And, um, part of that is remembering things some people don’t.” Daisy swallowed, wishing she could chug a glass of water. Did they have any water aboard the Quinjet? She really should’ve checked before she left. “There are some things...that I remember. That you might not.” 

“I mean, I sort of expected that. Being from my technical future, and all that.” 

“No, not that, um. We, uh. In the time loops. We kissed.” There. It was out, and there was absolutely no taking it back. “We kissed in one of the time loops before we went to go trap Enoch, but you don’t remember it because of the reset.” 

“We kissed?” Sousa’s face twitched as he tried to work through the implications of their supposed liplock. “We kissed.” She could almost see the cogs turning in his head. “Does that mean we’ve had this conversation before?” 

_ Busted.  _ “In a way.” She hadn’t necessarily gone into the whole baggage issue, but yeah, they had. “I may or may not have heard the whole ‘running into walls’ speech before.” 

“And you still let me make it?” He grinned at her, visage stress-free despite the fact that they were encapsulated in a floating death trap. The sight of it warmed Daisy’s heart somewhat, and she could practically feel her soul being gently set back up on her feet after being battered around by the tumultuous memories the men’s earlier speech had dredged up. 

“Hey, it was a good speech,” she defended, putting her hands up. He rolled his eyes fondly. “It was! It made me smile the first time I heard it.” 

“Still not what you want to happen when you’re trying to impress someone,” he muttered, and she reached to pat his hand. “Things like that, you know, usually you make the speech for the first time and they go for it.” 

“Technically, I did go for it.” 

“You  _ remember  _ making the speech when they go for it.” They both grinned at each other, a silly little thing that, for a single moment, was free of the insurmountable pressure to save the world. Just for that moment, they didn’t have to be anything but Daniel and Daisy – not people out of time (or literal time), not the heroes people thought they were, not even agents of SHIELD. Just Daniel and Daisy. 

“When we get back,” Sousa began, and neither of them missed how he’d said  _ when  _ rather than  _ if. Always the optimist, apparently.  _ “Not that getting kidnapped and trapped in a time storm is normal in any relationship, but I figured that since we’ve been doing things a little backwards...we could maybe go back to the start?” 

“What, back to 1955?” The look he gave her suggested she knew exactly was he was talking about. So maybe she hadn’t grown from using humor as a deflection mechanism. Sue her. “I’m not sure you’d like 2019. It’s low-key a hot mess.” Returning to the present meant needing to stare the physical reminders of her failures in the face. Time travelling had allowed Daisy to turn a blind eye to it somewhat; it was much easier to forget your regrets when there was the constant possibility of them being changed. 

Would he see present-day Daisy the same way he did now?

“Dinner. You and me,” Sousa said instead, and this time, he met her eyes to hold them. “We sit. Have a meal. Not worry about killer robots or time-space vortexes or anyone else for a hot minute. You and me. Nothing has to come of it,” he told her when she opened her mouth. “But I want to get to know you outside of learning about you in last-minute life-or-death situations.” 

Daisy sighed. The lack of pressure sounded appealing, she had to admit – she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been in a situation that didn’t have some sort of stakes, romantic or not. And he’d said he hadn’t expected anything of her, which was...oddly heartwarming. It was one thing to say that you expected everything of someone, another to say that you expected nothing. But to say that nothing  _ had  _ to expected made all the difference. 

Whether or not she pressed for more was entirely up to her. If she did, he would be there for her; if she didn’t, the result would probably still be the same. Maybe it was worth taking a chance, then. She didn’t have to put her heart on the line (it would take a much longer time, if ever, for that to happen), she could just be as she’d always been. 

“I think that’d be cool,” she offered finally, and just because the situation needed a little levity, she joked, “Should I pick the place?”

“Probably,” Sousa laughed, shaking his head. “I’m not sure any of the places I’ve been to are around anymore.” 

“You’d be surprised,” Mack’s voice sounded from behind, and both of them turned to look at him as the dash in front of them began to beep softly. “I have a visual on Z1, about a few minutes out.” So they’d managed to make it after all; Sousa’s  _ when  _ had just become a little more plausible. “Be prepped for docking.”

All pretense of dinner plans fell away as the two of them nodded, scooting out of their seats and hurrying to join Mack to suit up.

If this was to be their last mission, they would damn well make it one worth fighting for. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading! If you'd like to see something, I'm taking prompts from [this](https://justanalto.tumblr.com/post/622842304685834240/300-prompts) list!


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